Murder (england and wales)
Murder (Engl. Murder ) is in criminal law of England and Wales , the most serious of all homicides . The offense of murder is not defined by statute law , but a common law offense , i.e. H. a criminal offense that exists only through judicial or common law. Until 1965, murder was punished with the death penalty; today, life imprisonment is mandatory for murder, which is why in practice there is often a criminal offense of voluntary manslaughter , which gives the judge greater freedom in determining the sentence.
requirements
Any causation of the death of another person is sufficient as an actus reus of murder . Any child who is born alive, but not a fetus, is considered to be a different person (see A-G's Reference (No. 3 of 1994) (1997)).
The mens rea of murder is that the perpetrator must have killed with “malice aforethought”. With aforethought malice is not only intent includes the killing, but already the intent to Grievous bodily harm (abbr. GBH) (see. R v Vickers (1957) ).
The year and a day rule stated that if the victim's death did not occur within a year and a day, there was usually no murder. This rule was abolished in England and Wales in 1996, but still applies in New Zealand today .
Planned reforms
The Draft Criminal Code (DCC), a codification proposal by the Law Commission from 1989, proposed the following definition of murder :
"(1) A person is guilty of murder if he causes the death of another–
(a) intending to cause death
(b) intending to cause serious personal harm and being aware that he may cause death,
unless section 56 (diminshed responsibility) , 58 (provocation), 59 (use of excessive force) or 64 (infanticide) applies. "
However, the continuing skepticism in Great Britain about codifications of common law led to the fact that in 2008 the Law Commission officially bid farewell to parliamentary enforcement of the DCC.
literature
- Nicola Padfield: Criminal law . 7th edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-958204-4 , pp. 184-187 .
- Volker Helmert: The definition of a criminal offense in Europe . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2011, BI 1. The sources of English criminal law and their interaction, p. 84-86 .
